How secondary schools promote themselves
Subtitle: the case of Catholic schools in Ontario.
Published: 2004
Language: eng
Number of pages: 237
Subjects: High schools -- Public relations -- Ontario.; Catholic high schools -- Public relations -- Ontario.
Description: In 1997, the Ontario government introduced new legislation for secondary schools. This new legislation cascaded into a series of educational changes that came to be known as Secondary School Reform. This study deals with the promotion of secondary schools within the context of educational reform. The research questions are aimed at investigating what schools are actually doing to promote themselves, whether participants make a distinction between school promotion, public relations and marketing, and what strategies facilitate or inhibit schools' promotional efforts. The study also attempts to investigate the sphere of "reputation management" with possible applications to schools needing to manage public perceptions in the context of educational reforms. This study is based on the notion that schools need to engage in school promotion to make the general public feel that they are being responsive to current government reform initiatives.The design of the study is a case study analysis of two Catholic secondary schools engaged in promotional efforts. The research study involved semi-structured interviews of two principals, five parents from each school, five teachers from each school, five students from each school, five members of the business community, the two priests associated with the schools in the study, and the school board's Public Relations Officer. This study also includes a review of documents and observations of school Open Houses.School board policy on enrollment exists that defines schools with catchment areas. However, Catholic schools seem to attract non-Catholic students as well as Catholic students because both Catholic and public feeder schools exist within the same catchment areas. Both Catholic Schools in the study engaged in school promotion, public relations and marketing techniques at different times of the school year and through different events. However, the participants in the study, even within each school, differed in their perception of what they were doing with regard to school promotion, public relations or marketing. Some participants felt that they were engaging in promotional efforts to attract good students, while some thought that they were building the public perception of the school, and others thought that they were engaged in promotional efforts to make students, parents and the general community feel good about belonging to the school-community. Further studies need to be conducted on mechanisms by which the educational community might inform the political community, which is the current policy-making body. Further studies also need to be done to include the voice of the trustees as a stakeholder group in policy promotion. This study has implications for school practitioners and policy makers.
Notes: Adviser: Amanda Datnow.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2004.

Electronic version licensed for access by U. of T. users.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 65-05, Section: A, page: 1603.